- Former Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman made his fortune as a technology executive who wasn't a founder.
- Bloomberg estimates his net worth at $3.7 billion, higher than both Tim Cook and Satya Nadella.
- He has been described as a combative CEO who belongs to Silicon Valley's conservative wing.
The highly successful and outspoken technology executive who just stepped down as CEO of Snowflake may not be as well-known as Apple's Tim Cook or Microsoft's Satya Nadella, but he's better known than both. is also wealthy.
Frank Slotman, who stepped down as a top executive at the cloud-based data warehousing company last week, is worth $3.7 billion, Bloomberg reports, an amount that is higher than Cook (worth about $2 billion) and Nadella. (not yet a millionaire).
A Snowflake spokesperson declined to comment.
Bloomberg reports that Slootman made his fortune as head of three companies: Snowflake, ServiceNow Inc., and Data Domain. He led Snowflake to one of the biggest tech IPOs of 2020, raising $3.4 billion at a valuation of $33.3 billion.
Slootman, who was born in the Netherlands and moved to the United States in his 20s, has been described as a militant CEO who belongs to Silicon Valley's conservative wing, along with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Palmer Lackey. Business Insider's Katie Warren reports. 2021. He eschewed tenants like diversity and political correctness in favor of a profit-driven ethos.
In 2021, Slootman apologized, saying in an interview that he did not want diversity to trump merit in hiring or promotions. In a subsequent statement, he clarified that diversity and merit are not mutually exclusive, said Snowflake is committed to further DEI efforts, and apologized to anyone hurt by his comments.
Slootman will remain chairman of Snowflake's board, but will be succeeded as CEO by Sridhar Ramaswamy, a former Google advertising executive who joined Snowflake last May to lead the company's AI strategy.
